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#1
System Locking Up/Screen Distortion
My home built desktop system is having two possibly related problems. Sometimes when the system is left on overnight, it will lock up and become completely unresponsive. This can happen as often as every day to sometimes only once a week.
About a week ago, while doing some normal computing, the screen distorted and became unresponsive. I hard rebooted the machine and it worked for about two minutes before the same thing happened. Did a hard reboot again and the machine was fine for hours. That evening, while listening to iTunes, browsing the web, and moving some photos from one folder to another, the screen flickered a couple of times. It also looked as though the Windows interface changed back to Basic. I opened SpeedFan to take a look at the temperatures and saw that my GPU's temp was quickly rising, so I shut the system down for the night.
Here is what I have tried so far in terms of troubleshooting:
- When these problems started last year, I ran FurMark to test the GPU. The test didn't even last a minute before the screen distorted and the system locked up. The temp got up to around 75 C.
- I ran the FurMark test again today. The temp reached 94 C within about 1-1.5 mins. I ran the test for about nine minutes total. The temp never exceeded 95 C, the system never locked up, and the screen showed no artifacts.
- I ran Prime95 for 8.5 hours and had no errors. According to SpeedFan, the temp never exceeded 80 C. Some cores did hit 92. I also had a co-worker run Prime95 with my proc in his machine and it did not report any errors either.
- I ran MemTest86+ for nearly six full passes and no errors were reported. I also ran the Windows memory testing tool and again, no errors.
- I have had both the motherboard and the graphics card RMA'd, and the manufactures said in both cases that they were fine.
- I tried installing a different graphics card in my system (an NVIDIA GeForce 9600 XT), but I could never get the card to work. During the reboot of the driver installation, the system would always lock up at the Windows 7 screen.
Some additional details:
- According to SpeedFan, my GPU normally sits around 48-52 C and my CPU sits around 38 C with individual cores sitting around 38-50 C. This is under normal load.
- The system is not overclocked in any way
- All drivers and software are fully up-to-date
- I am running Zone Alarm 2012 as my security solution. There are no infections on the system.
- Everything is seated properly
- The case is spacious and I don't think cooling inside the case is an issue as I have two friends with identical cases and far more hardware and they have no problems
- The case, fans, vents, etc. are all clean and free of dust
- My system specs are in my profile
The only thing I can think of at this point is that a cable near the GPU fan sometimes gets in the way. But if that was the case, wouldn't I probably hear a noise or something if the GPU fan got jammed?
Sorry for the long post, but I'm at a loss here.